Easier to sketch are the outlines of
the Goddess's relationship with Hephaestus, the masculine principle in
the image of fire. The fire God not only had his altar, in the Erechtheum
but was present there in the eternally burning lamp which, like the fire
of Vesta in Rome, had to be cared for by a priestess. The difference between
these two cults -- the priestess of Athena was not a virgin but a married
woman -- is small in comparison to the similarity of their relationship
to fire. In Rome this relationship was more abstract than it was in Athens.
The cultic legend of Athena Hellotis in Corinth gives us an idea of the
original concreteness of this fire worship. This legend comes down to us
in a somewhat confused form, but it shows a remarkable correspondence to
the fate of the Locrian maidens who were sacrificed to Athena and then
cremated. Sometimes two sisters are mentioned, sometimes four. Among their
names are Hellotis (an epithet of both Athena and Europa), Eurytione (a
parallel form to Europa), and Chryse (also a name for Athena). According
to one version, a distressed Hellotis takes her younger sister Chryse with
her into the temple of Athena and throws herself into the fire. According
to the other version, the two sisters Hellotis and Eurytione, together
with a child, died in the fire of Athena's temple, and the festival of
Hellotia was used as an atonement for their deaths by fire. The succumbing
of a virgin who represented the Goddess, or even of two virgins who corresponded
to her two aspects, to the God of fire is demonstrated in this material.

In a series of cultic artifacts and
mythological traditions, another aspect of Hephaestus' relationship to
Athena comes up to the fore: here he is not the consuming God of fire,
but the bridegroom, husband, and father of a divine child. In the month
of Pyanopsion the festival of Apaturia was celebrated, at which the youth
of Athens, in phratries ("brotherhoods") and under the protection of Zeus
Phratrius and Athena Phratria [Text and Views: Temple
of Zeus Phratrius and Athena Phratia], received the initiation which
they needed in order to get married. It was a kind of maturational ceremony.
At this festival Hephaestus was particularly celebrated: men, dressed in
their most beautiful garments, lit the torch at the fire of the hearth,
sang in praise of their God, and sacrified to him. There is no report in
the fragmentary evidence of a torchlight procession but such can safely
be assumed, and for the Corinthian Hellotia a report of such is handed
down explicitly. On the last day of the same month began the festival which
Hephaestus and Athena shared in common, the Chalkeia. The secret of this
festival was not given away, with the result that more stories were told
about it, such as that Athena was given to Hephaestus and placed in a chamber
for him, or that he followed her and embraced her [Image: Athena
in Hephaestus' workshop]. All variations allow the Goddess to leave
the embrace a virgin, but they also allow a child to originate from this
same embrace, born from the semen of the God which was received by the
earth, and then handed over to Athena [Image: Athena
receives Erichthonius]. According to one version the sacred wool of
the Goddess with which the divine semen was caught also played a role in
the story.

Marriage, pregnancy, and victorious
maidenhood are the given elements, and the self-contradictory relations
among them is what the various stories seek to explain. A cultic epithet
of the Goddess seems to refer to the same episode, which was related in
so many variations and yet to a certain extent was kept secret. In Sparta,
Athena was called Chalkiolcus ("she of the bronze chamber"), and supposedly
she owned a temple there made of bronze [Image: Temple of Athena in Sparta].
Of what else could the wedding chamber have been made in which the smith
God Hephaestus locked himself with her? Greek mythology also knows of a
bronze wedding chamber in which the bridegroom appeared not as fire but
as golden rain [Image: Zeus and Danae]. This occurs in the story of Danae,
the mother of Perseus, a hero who was a special protégé of
Athena. This is also, however, a motif in the mythology of Athena: according
to a tradition on Rhodes, Zeus permitted golden rain to fall when the Goddess
sprang from his head [Image: Athena
born in a shower of gold]. Gold is also associated with a divine child
in the religion of Athena, and the simultaneity of the birth of this child
and the birth of the Goddess herself belongs to the mysteries of this religion.